Arlene from Israel – Very Briefly

Arlene Kushner 19/12/2014Comments Off on Arlene from Israel – Very Briefly1,317 Views

I am currently preparing for the arrival of family, and so have only a brief moment to write. The next three days I will be devoting myself to Chanukah (and Shabbat) and family – which is, quite frankly, a double lifesaver for me.

Simply wanted to update my readers, with much more, including analysis, to follow next week.

Last night Jordan did submit a proposal to the Security Council on behalf of the PA. At present I only know that it calls for “peace” between Israel and the PA to be completed in a year, with Israel’s “occupation” of Judea and Samaria to finish by the end of 2017, with Jerusalem as a shared capital. What clowns they are! But, of course, if they specify all of the terms of negotiations up front, there are not many matters left to discuss, are there?

There are several ways this might play out:

Sometimes a vote on a proposal submitted to the Council is delayed, or never even happens. The US might push for this option. PA officials say they’re in no rush to see it come to a vote, as there are consultations still to be done. In this regard, they are still making threats (maybe they’ll cancel security cooperation with Israel after all, etc.). They may envision this proposal to be a threat that drives us back to the table without their ever needing to call a vote.

Or, the US might decide to veto this.

Or, the US might draft and submit a different proposal, with or without consultation with Israel.

The only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that Israel is not going to complete negotiations with the PA in a year, and is not going to pull back in Judea and Samaria. How this will be handled diplomatically and legally will be explored as it goes. There are several legal/diplomatic problems with this proposal, of course.

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Minister of Intelligence Yuval Steinitz (Likud) calls this proposal “an act of war,” not an act of peace. He recommends a very harsh response to the PA.

I have read that Kerry tried to delay this proposal until after Israeli elections, because it’s not right to interfere in the election process. That’s good for a laugh. No interfering in elections, if the interference wouldn’t have the result he desires, is what he means. His concern, very obviously, is that such a proposal would push a furious Israeli electorate to the right.

Well, the proposal was submitted, and that is exactly what may happen. Let us hope so. Israelis do not like being pushed around this way. We need a very strong, very determined government to deal with all of this.

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The EU court decision, which removed Hamas from its list of terror organizations, was based on the premise that there had been no information on Hamas’s status provided by EU states or persons. EU officials tried to suggest yesterday that such information would be coming soon, so that Hamas would be quickly re-instated on the list. Well… maybe, and maybe not.

“…since the EU was founded in 1993, despite spending tens of thousands of man-hours and untold millions of euros on Middle East topics and on the ground in Israel and the territories, no effort has been made to document Arab terrorism. (Emphasis in the original)

”Think about it. The EU wants to be a part of the peace process – it is part of the Quartet – and it has given lots of money to anti-Israel NGOs. It has no problem criticizing Israeli actions and parsing the statements of Israeli ministers to find evidence of anything offensive.

“Yet in all that time, no EU official has felt it was important to research and report on Arab terrorism! Not one bothered to visit the site of suicide bombings and read official Hamas statements taking credit for them. Not one bothered to follow up on Hamas incitement, on Hamas anti-Semitism, or on Hamas’ public statements declaring all of Israel ‘occupied’ and all Israelis to be targets for attack.

“Not one.

”Apparently, the entire EU presence in the Middle East is meant to document Israeli building in the territories and to ferret out ‘price tag’ attacks. Thousands of pages are written about whether Israeli products that are manufactured on one side of the Green Line but packaged on the other side are considered contraband in Europe. But not one official report has been written that says that Hamas took credit for a terror attack. (Emphasis added)

”There is a huge blind spot in the most studied place on the planet, and yet in 21 years the EU has not been able to write up a single report on Palestinian terrorism.

”Is there any more evidence needed of EU bias against Israel than this?”

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Yesterday Hamas held its biggest military exercise since the end of the war this summer. Israeli residents near Gaza reported hearing explosions and shooting over night.

Hamas members display their weapons during a parade through Gaza City earlier this week. Photo by Reuters

Anything that buoys Hamas’s sense that the international community may be with them is reprehensible in the extreme.

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Yesterday, as well, there was a meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Accord, in Geneva, of course. It was one more exercise in Israel-bashing, and I will examine the issues when time allows.